“He’s been blind since he was ten,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “A chemical burn severely damaged both of his eyes. It’s really tragic. He’s already had surgeries at several major medical centers, all of which have failed, and doctors have said there’s nothing more they can do. But I’ve heard of your groundbreaking work and thought you might be able to help.”
It was the summer of 1999 when I received that call from Carole Klein, a former nun who taught visually impaired students at a high-school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She told me about one of her blind students, Francisco Salazar, a seventeen-year-old from Mexico whose mother, Clementina, had brought him to the States in search of a miracle to restore his eyesight. After multiple failed surgeries, numerous doctors had told them that Francisco’s eyes were beyond repair, but Clementina refused to give up hope.
Carole related to me what had happened to Francisco. Seven years ago in his hometown near Monterrey, Mexico, Francisco and a cousin were walking past a drainage ditch near a factory, when they came across a shiny glass bottle that stood out like a gem among trash. When Francisco pulled the stopper from the mouth of the bottle, sulfuric acid streamed out. When the acid hit the water in the ditch, it exploded into a gas cloud that seared both of Francisco’s eyes. He was blinded instantly.
Several months later, an ophthalmologist in Mexico City performed a corneal transplant on Francisco’s left eye, but its restored sight lasted only two days, and the cornea soon clouded over. His right eye was deemed too damaged to be repaired. Now permanently blind, Francisco retreated into himself over the next several years, no longer the fun-loving, outgoing boy he once was. Clementina, a woman of deep faith, was determined to save her young son’s eyesight. So in the spring of 1998, she and Francisco came to the U.S. to seek medical help. They joined relatives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, carrying about as much luggage and cash as I did when I first arrived in the U.S. in 1982. Hearing their story took me back to my earliest days in America, when I was trying to find my way in a foreign land. Deep down, I could relate to Francisco’s struggle, and I was moved by his mother’s love and resolve.
In North Carolina, Clementina met Carole Klein, who was so taken with Francisco’s tragic situation that she began helping his mother search for possible restorative medical care for him. A local surgeon who examined Francisco said that the injury from the chemical burns was too severe to proceed with any restorative surgery. He directed them to a surgeon at Duke University, but that too turned out to be a dead-end, as he too felt Francisco’s eyes were damaged beyond repair. There was no chance for the left eye, and since the right eye was so badly damaged, if he received a corneal transplant in that eye, it would soon scar over with an aggressive regrowth of dense blood vessels and become blind, just like his left eye had done back in Mexico City.
“What he needs is a rare and special microsurgery,” advised the surgeon from Duke. “But only three doctors in the country perform this procedure. We recommend the one in Nashville.”
That’s when Carole called me. “You are our last hope,” she said.
I told her I would do my best to help. I was anxious to meet this young man, so I asked them to come to Nashville as soon as possible.
They arrived a week later. I examined Francisco’s eyes and discovered that his left eye, which had already received the failed corneal transplant, had already shrunk. It had no light perception and was indeed irreparable. So our only hope was to try to restore sight in his right eye, which could only see light due to severe scarring and blood-vessel growth. The special microsurgery, which was what the Duke doctor was referring to, would involve a complex stem cell transplantation. However, it would be extremely risky in Francisco’s case because if it failed, the right eye would shrink just as the left eye had, and Francisco would be plunged into total darkness for the rest of his life. As Carole translated, I explained to Francisco and his mother the difficulty of this special microsurgery, the limited benefits, and the risks. After praying together, Francisco and Clementina decided to proceed.
I resolved to do my very best as an eye surgeon to help Francisco.
As he sat across from me, I told him honestly, “Your sight restoration process will be a very long and difficult journey, like walking all the way from Nashville to New York City on foot. But I’m going with you every step of the way.”
By this point in my life, I was quite acquainted with long, hard journeys, so I knew I would honor the promise I made to Francisco.
On August 11, 1999, three weeks after his initial eye exam with me, Francisco returned for the first stage of surgery on his right eye. I removed the scarring and blood vessels that had formed over his right cornea, and sutured an amniotic membrane in place to prevent his eye from scarring again as the tissues were healing.
Francisco was then to return to Nashville a few months later for a corneal transplant and stem cell graft from adult donor tissue, but before we had a chance to perform the surgery, things went horribly awry. The chemical injury had damaged his right eye so badly that the cornea actually perforated, producing tiny yet dangerous fluid leaks. Consequently, we had to perform two emergency corneal transplants in his right eye within a matter of months just to salvage the eyeball itself. As we anticipated, vascular scar tissue quickly grew over the eye again in the same disorderly scarring process that had repeatedly blinded countless number of patients with such severe corneal injuries.
At this point, the only way we would have any chance of restoring sight in Francisco’s right eye was to perform a complex corneal stem cell transplantation surgery, a procedure which was only being performed in a few centers in the country. The stem cells are found in a ring of tissue that surrounds the cornea, and they are the key to the eye’s ability to heal. The chemical burn in Francisco’s right eye was so severe that it had destroyed all of Francisco’s own corneal stem cells, which was why his eyes healed abnormally with such aggressive, repeated formation of scarring and blood vessels. Though the odds were against us, we were able to successfully perform the surgery, and for several months it seemed that his eye might actually heal and his vision finally be restored.
But by late November of 2000, Francisco’s eye was rapidly deteriorating again. On Friday, November 24th, I told Carole and Clementina to bring him back to Nashville so we could attempt an unprecedented quadruple-step surgery that would include another corneal transplant, another corneal limbal stem cell transplant, a cataract removal, and an intraocular lens implantation. Francisco and his family arrived the following Friday, and we scheduled the procedure for the next Tuesday.
“Where will the donor tissue come from?” Carole asked.
As I considered her question, an eerie feeling crept over me.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Since the corneal transplant is scheduled on Tuesday, we’ll get the fresh tissue on Monday, which means the person destined to donate his or her eyes to Francisco is still alive right now.”
On Tuesday, as Francisco was prepped for surgery, I waited anxiously for the shipment of donor cornea. At 8:00 am, the air-freighted shipment finally arrived. When I looked at the return address, another chill went through me. The donor was a twelve-year-old boy from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the very city from which Francisco had come. The moment was charged with a sharp duality of feelings. I was immensely grateful for young tissue to restore Francisco’s sight, but also deeply saddened that his hope came through the tragic loss of someone else … from his own local community.
With the donor cornea tissue in hand, we could now finally begin this groundbreaking quadruple procedure. The surgery began well, but halfway through, something unexpected occurred. The assisting surgeon and nursing staff grew very quiet and tense as they witnessed an impending disaster unfold on the large monitor. As I attempted to remove the old corneal graft, the inner matter of Francisco’s eye clung to it stubbornly, threatening to spill out. If this occurred, there would be no possibility of reconstructing the eye at all, and all hope for any sight in his right eye would be permanently lost.
I was sweating from the severity of the situation. I had to do everything I could to prevent this disaster from happening. My heart pounded as I moved quickly and decisively. Finally after an intense moment, during which I felt I wasn’t even breathing, I was able to successfully reposition the content back into the eye that was threatening to come out.
I paused and took a deep breath of relief. At least the eyeball itself was saved, for now. I asked a nurse to wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead, and give me a sip of water. Francisco was still sleeping deeply under general anesthesia. Looking at his young face, images flashed through my mind of myself at the beginning of my own long journey out of the darkness of the Cultural Revolution. Over the decades of medical training and growing faith, I knew without a doubt that I had been called and was equipped to help blind kids just like Francisco. I had experienced my own darkness when I was his age, and now with everything in me, I wanted to pull him out of his darkness into the light.
With a bit of rest, and renewed determination and mental clarity, I resumed Francisco’s surgery, starting with the risky process of trying to remove the old graft, while doing all I could to avoid repeating the problems experienced in the last attempt. I tugged delicately and slowly at the old graft, elevating and gently pulling it, like the ancient Chinese micro-sculptors did when they would carve a line of poem in Chinese characters onto the side of a strand of hair. After what felt like an eternity, the old graft was finally separated and removed from the underlying tissue. I then removed the cataract, implanted an intraocular lens, sutured the new cornea into place, and transplanted adult stem cells around the new cornea. After four long hours, the unprecedented and intense quadruple-step surgery was finally completed, and Francisco’s eyeball was saved. I dropped my shoulders and exhaled.
The following morning, Francisco returned to my clinic with Carole and Clementina to find out the results of his surgery. Both Carole and Clementina were unusually quiet and looked as if they had been carrying the weight of the whole seven-year journey on their shoulders for longer than their strength could bear. I felt anxious, not knowing whether my best efforts had been enough to save this teenager’s sight.
Before I removed the bandage from Francisco’s eye, we gathered in a circle and held hands—a Dominican former nun, a Mexican mother and son, and a Chinese-American doctor—and we prayed.
“Dear God, we know you have the power to heal this young boy who has lived in darkness these last seven years,” I said softly. I had done my utmost, and I had no idea if God would allow Francisco to see again, but I trusted Him. “Thank you, God, for bringing us this far. Thank you for Francisco and his courage. Thank you for all that Carole and Clementina have done for him. God, please help us to accept whatever your will is for this outcome. Amen.”
I reached forward and peeled back the tape to remove Francisco’s bandage.
He opened his right eye slowly, blinked and looked around in bewilderment. Then a broad smile appeared across his face.
“Can you see?” I asked.
He nodded. “Who do you recognize in the room?” I added.
Francisco looked around. He didn’t recognize me or Carole, since he had only known our voices over the past several years. Only one person in the entire room of a dozen people had been part of Francisco’s life before he became blind seven years earlier.
“My mother,” he said.
I turned toward Clementina, who was standing in a far corner. She burst into tears, made her way to Francisco and embraced him tightly.
Carole jumped up and down, her hands raised up toward the ceiling, and thanked God over and over.
I let out a huge sigh and said my own prayer of thanks. We had made it!
Francisco could now see!
After years of many failed surgeries, this final and critical microsurgery was the one that was finally successful! In the ensuing several months, Francisco’s vision in his right eye improved to 20/40. He threw away his Braille books and replaced them with regular school books. He could now go on to live more independently than ever before.
After seven years of being locked in darkness, Francisco came into light. He got his life back, he was overjoyed with happiness!
While I helped restore Francisco’s sight, he also gave me something very precious in return. Back in Chapel Hill with his newfound sight, Francisco read about my life story online, about the hardship and danger of the Cultural Revolution that had threatened to destroy me when I was around his age. Francisco then shared with his high-school principal how my education had been cut short at age 14, how I faced deportation, poverty, and hard labor, how I later fought hard to get into college after years of no education, and in all the chaos, how I never actually received my high-school diploma back in China.
“Dr. Wang helped me wake up from my long sleep of darkness,” Francisco told the principal. “In return, can we give him the one thing he deserves but has never received, a high-school diploma?”
So in 2000, twenty-three years after finishing high-school in China, I finally received my diploma, an honorary graduation certificate from Chapel Hill High-school in North Carolina.
It now hangs on the wall in my office, right beside my undergraduate and graduate degrees. More than a piece of paper, these certificates represent to me the blessings that I have experienced against so many odds. From college in China to medical training in America, influences from both the East and the West have made me who I am today. I have realized that life is truly a circle of give and take, and of helping and allowing yourself to be helped by others.
On a wall in the Wang Vision Institute hangs another special memento from Francisco, a plaque with a thank-you note in Braille at the top (the last time he ever used Braille) and below it, a thank you note in Spanish (the first time he had written since before his accident seven years ago).
Out of my gratitude for all the opportunities this country has offered me, I waived my surgeon fees for all of Francisco’s surgeries, and out of his gratitude for sight, Francisco helped me complete a missing link in my own education. His gift was and still is special to me, and every time I look at it, I think of the wooden plaques that grateful patients had given my grandfather back in China some seventy years ago, and I’m proud to know that I’ve followed in his footsteps down this very rewarding path of helping the needy.
* * *
I experienced a revelation through caring for Francisco. I found that nothing excited me more than witnessing a patient emerge from darkness into sight. This ability to change people’s lives was both a heavy responsibility and an immense blessing that I got to enjoy nearly every day I went to work.
After Francisco, I had many other cases like his, but insurance companies weren’t willing to pay for these experimental sight restoration surgeries. Not everyone had a special person like Carole in their lives, who had gone above and beyond to raise money for Francisco’s care. Even though I waived all my fees as the surgeon, there were still other expenses involved, such as lab testing, donor tissue, surgical facility and travel and lodging cost.
After five successful years at Vanderbilt, I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture. It became increasingly clear to me that God had a purpose behind the suffering of my early years in China, and the incredible trajectory of my career since then. After twenty-five years of education, training, and clinical practice, I was now in a position and had a unique set of skills that could make a significant difference in other people’s lives, people who had been told there was nothing more that could be done to restore their sight.
I wanted to donate my medical care to more patients like Francisco, but working at a large university meant that I didn’t have much say in the matter. I wasn’t the owner of the business—I was merely an employee—so I couldn’t waive charges to deserving patients at will. As long as I worked for a larger institution, I was constrained in how much charity care I could offer. However, if I started my own private practice, then it would be a different story.
So on April 1, 2002, I left the university and opened my own business—Wang Vision Institute (WVI)—in the Palmer Plaza on West End Avenue, near downtown Nashville. Our practice focuses on highly customized laser vision correction, cataract surgery, and complex sight restoration procedures, always using the most innovative technologies available. In 2002, WVI became the first center in Tennessee to offer bladeless all-laser LASIK, which improved the accuracy and precision of LASIK to an unprecedented level. WVI has since been the site of many other groundbreaking eye surgeries, including the world’s first 3D LASIK procedure and laser-assisted artificial cornea implantation, the country’s first laser Intacs procedure for advanced keratoconus, and Tennessee’s first 3D laser cataract surgery, 3D Laser Kamra procedure, and 3D Forever Young Lens surgery. Besides my paper in the world-renowned journal Nature, I have also published eight textbooks regarding the corneal and lens surgeries and hold several U.S. patents for inventions of new biotechnologies to restore sight. My work was recognized with an Achievement Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Chinese American Physicians.
Starting a private practice wasn’t just about more freedom—it was a calling. My discovery of faith through hardship reinforced the notion that everything I had been given held the larger purpose of helping those most in need. With my dual specialties in laser physics and ophthalmology, I feel blessed to have had a unique opportunity to conduct research to develop novel laser eye treatments for even the most dire cases.
As my practice grew, people started contacting us from nearly every state in the U.S. and from countries around the world. I have performed more than 55,000 procedures, including over 4,000 on fellow doctors, which earned me the distinction of being the “doctor’s doctor.” Since many of the critically injured patients I saw had been to other surgeons who told them that they would never be able to see again, I became these patients’ last resort, something I didn’t take lightly. But many of them did not have insurance, nor the finances to pay for advanced care. The success of my private practice allowed me the freedom to provide such care, but I couldn’t do it alone. I needed an organization and a team to help me realize my vision of offering free sight restoration surgeries to those who needed them the most, but couldn’t afford them.
So in 2003, one year after I started my private practice, I created the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The foundation enabled me to organize a group of doctors who could each devote a small portion of their time to caring for charity patients. This care would represent a commitment of only five percent or less of a participating physician’s overall clinic time. Nearly thirty doctors signed on to help, many of them inspired by their faith and intrigued by the technology available for these complex sight restoration cases. In addition to the volunteer doctors, medical companies donated supplies, and a board of directors of the foundation consisting of community philanthropic leaders helped to ensure adequate funding for our activities.
The first Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration patient was Joel Case from Crossville, Tennessee. Joel was in his early forties and had been blind since he was young. A rubella infection in utero had scarred both of his corneas so badly that they were cloudy white, which meant that from birth onward he would look at the world as if through wax paper. In his earliest years, Joel could see the big “E” on the sight chart, but by the time he was eight years old, he could only perceive light and shadows. His mother, Anna, had taken him all over the United States to major hospitals, and Joel underwent several transplant surgeries on both of his eyes, but with no success. Joel’s doctors told him that he would never be able to see again. Though he had been deprived of sight his entire life, he lived independently and worked alongside his father in the family vending business.
Joel first came to see me in 1997. His eyes were covered in white scar tissue, ribboned with tiny blood vessels. He had already suffered a retinal detachment in his right eye, so his only hope for restored vision rested on treating his left eye. Over the next several years, I performed three major surgeries on that eye, including a corneal transplant and two amniotic membrane transplants, but Joel’s immune system rejected the transplanted corneas. I held onto hope, however, because I had been witnessing medical treatments advance enormously in recent years. By 2003, an artificial cornea had been invented, and I was anxious to see if the new technology could benefit Joel.
In early 2004, eight years after I started taking care of Joel, he came in for a checkup and made an exciting announcement.
“I’ve found the love of my life,” he said. Joel introduced me to Beth Ann Dahl, a darling young lady. “I love her, and I’m going to marry her.”
I realized that Joel had actually never seen Beth Ann. I was moved by their love for each other, particularly that of Joel for Beth Ann, since his feelings could not have been based on any physical attraction having never seen her. I was happy Joel had found someone with whom he could share his life. Their wedding would be eight months later, in September of 2004. I began to think how marvelous it would be if we could restore Joel’s sight before his wedding day. I wanted Beth Ann’s groom to see her walk down the aisle, beaming in her beautiful wedding dress. Was that possible now that we had artificial cornea technology?
I was thrilled to tell Joel that after years of testing, the U.S. FDA had finally approved AlphaCor, a new artificial cornea implant designed especially for patients whose eyes had rejected traditional corneal transplants … patients just like Joel. Artificial body parts reduced the chance that the body’s immune system would reject them, which was the number one issue with organ transplantation and was precisely why all Joel’s previous corneal transplants had failed. The artificial implant was clear and flexible, and resembled a small contact lens. Joel would become our foundation’s first patient, and the first in the state of Tennessee to receive this new artificial cornea. If the surgery was successful, Joel might be able to finally see the world around him, and most important of all, he’d see his bride, Beth Ann, at their wedding!
We discussed the surgical plan, which was to create a pocket in his cornea and embed the artificial cornea. Next we would wait three months for his eye to heal around the implant, and then remove the outer flap of the corneal pocket so Joel could see through the new cornea. Joel and Beth Ann were both thrilled and decided to proceed with the artificial cornea surgery.
Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the surgery because, during the surgery after I removed the scar tissue, I could see through the microscope that his cornea was too thin and misshapen to withstand any blade dissection in order to create the pocket for the artificial cornea. The irregular and unevenly thin cornea meant that I had to completely abandon the blade pocket dissection. I didn’t dare cut any further, for fear of perforating his eye and causing him to possibly lose the only eye that he had left.
After the aborted surgery, I met with Joel, Beth Ann, and Anna to explain the situation.
“I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t proceed with the surgery as I had planned because Joel’s cornea is just too thin and irregular, so it would have been unsafe to move forward with blade dissection to create the pocket for the artificial cornea,” I said.
We were all very disappointed, but none more than Joel, who realized that even though the new artificial cornea technology was available now he still would not be able to benefit from it and hence still wouldn’t be able to see after more than forty years,
“I have another idea,” I said, “but it might be a long shot.”
I explained to Joel and his family, who were now very intrigued, that I had the only bladeless laser eye surgery device in Tennessee, a femtosecond laser, which has an ultrashort pulse and replaces the microkeratome, a surgical blade typically used to cut into the cornea. I believed the femtosecond laser would be much more precise in the pocket creation and would allow me to much more safely control the level of cutting than is possible with a blade.
While the idea sounded wonderful, there was a catch—no one had ever used the femtosecond laser for the purposes of creating a corneal pocket and implanting an artificial cornea!
So if we did choose to use this powerful new laser instead of a blade, Joel would become the world’s first patient to undergo a laser-assisted artificial cornea implantation. The thought of being able to utilize a laser in such an innovative manner to possibly bring Joel’s sight back brought me an immense feeling of gratitude and hope. Back at the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Maryland, I would have never guessed that my years of training in lasers would one day be so useful in medicine. I now understood why God had allowed so much hardship and learning in my life throughout my early years. I believe He wanted me to not only build character, resilience, and resourcefulness, but also to learn both parts of the knowledge to treat patients like Joel successfully, namely both technology and medicine. I also realized that treating these patients, for whom all traditional technologies had failed, was God’s calling for my life. I could now possibly help Joel and other terminally blind patients by combining medicine with the laser technology that I had spent decades learning.
I explained to the Case family the high risk involved with this laser artificial cornea surgery as it had never been done before, so even though Joel was excited about the idea, I asked him to go home and think about it carefully. Throughout that weekend, I thought a lot myself about Joel and the procedure. His left eye was his only hope, but because of the thinness and deformity of his cornea that we have just discovered, the surgical risk was now even greater than I had originally anticipated. If anything went wrong—with either the new laser or the surgery itself—Joel could lose his already very limited light-perception vision in that eye, which was all what he had left. The surgery could only go one of two ways—it would either be a success, and Joel then might possibly be able to see after forty years, and see Beth Ann on their wedding day, or it would be a failure, and then Joel would be thrust into pitch darkness for the rest of his life.
The magnitude of that responsibility weighed heavily on me. But just as I had done at other crucial times in my life when my own capabilities did not seem to be sufficient, I sought God’s guidance and strength.
“God, what should I do? Should I allow Joel to take this risk?” I prayed repeatedly throughout that weekend.
By Monday a peace had come over me, and I sensed that God had answered my prayer. I felt confident that laser artificial cornea surgery was the right thing to do. Joel returned and decided to proceed with the surgery, fully understanding the risks involved. The historic femtosecond laser part of the artificial cornea procedure went beautifully. Joel was then immediately transferred to St. Thomas Hospital for the implantation of the artificial cornea, which also went well.
So the first two steps of the world’s first laser-assisted artificial corneal implantation were a complete success. Three months later, Joel returned for the final step of the surgery—the removal of the corneal pocket’s outer flap, which would hopefully allow him to now see through his new artificial cornea.
The day after the surgery, Joel, Beth Ann, and Anna returned to my office for Joel’s post-op visit. Just as we had done with Francisco, we stood in a circle and held hands to pray before removing Joel’s bandage. I felt that my inner strength alone was insufficient to cope with the consequences of the surgery’s outcome, so I asked God again to help us all accept His will, whatever it would be. I submitted my will to God and I was at peace.
I slowly peeled off Joel’s bandage, feeling both nervous and excited. I had been treating Joel for more than eight years by then, but I knew that his own journey out of darkness had lasted more than four decades, and now the moment of truth was here.
Joel opened his left eye tentatively, then looked around, blinking rapidly. Suddenly a smile burst across his face as he cup his hand over his eyebrow and gazed out the window.
He could see! I anxiously pushed Beth Ann toward him. He turned and saw his future wife … for the very first time.
“Ah, you have brown hair!” he squealed. “And you’re beautiful.” They hugged and both cried with joy.
As Joel looked around the room, he was deeply moved when he finally recognized his mother. Anna walked over and put her arms around him. Since losing his sight, he hadn’t seen her in more than thirty years. She had aged in all the years he was shrouded in darkness, but love transcends time, now Joel was thrilled that he could once again look at his mother’s face and see the love in her eyes.
Joel and Beth Ann were married four months later. Unfortunately, I was out of the country on their big day, but they sent me photos. Joel gazed at his new wife lovingly in every one of them. I felt blessed that God had given me the very special honor of helping bring sight to Joel just in time for him to fully enjoy such an important event in his life.
But as I continued to look through the wedding photos, I felt a tightness develop in my chest. Although my patients were experiencing joy and happiness, those emotions eluded me at that time because my short-lived marriage to my second wife, Suyuan Liu, had failed.
I met Suyuan while she was pursuing a master’s degree in communications at a university in San Antonio, Texas. Suyuan was extremely beautiful and intelligent. She shared my ethnic background, as well as many of my interests and passions, including dancing. As soon as she completed her graduate program, she moved to Nashville. We were engaged shortly after that, and we got married in 2001. But our marriage lasted only two years.
I couldn’t believe I was facing another divorce. I had come from such a solid, devoted family and I was able to help my patients enjoy their family lives more fully, so I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to create a loving, stable family life for myself. I was a hard worker, an honest citizen, and a good Christian. What kind of weaknesses kept me from developing better personal relationships and building a family? It would take time for me to find an answer to that question, but not before my inner shortcomings would continue to render personal happiness an unobtainable goal.
Whenever I suffered setbacks in my personal life, I would escape by submerging myself more and more deeply into my work. I knew it wasn’t the solution to my relationship issues, but it had always been my refuge in hard times. I justified it because I was driven to succeed, and I also greatly enjoyed the entire process of helping patients like Francisco and Joel. The lengthy and exciting task of bringing someone out of darkness inspired me. Ironically, as restoring the human experience for others became all-consuming, I allowed it to repeatedly rob me of what I consider one of the most important aspects of my own life. Sadly, the second failed marriage wouldn’t be my last, and many years would pass before I would finally find strength and maturity in this area. As long as the foundation had patients to serve, I would have an outlet to which I could devote my time, while continuing my search for deeper love and meaning.